I've been in the IT industry since the time of the dinosaurs (ICL anyone?). I've written books about the Internet and networking, consulted for all sorts of companies, and been a contributor and columnist for Network World for 18 years (check out my Backspin and Gearhead columns). I created and co-founded Netratings (now wholly owned by Nielsen) and have CTO'ed for a couple of startups. I live in Ventura, CA. I do not surf.

Believing in Cold Fusion and the E-Cat

So, it turns out that any concerns you might have had over Harold Camping’s prediction that the world would end on October 21, can now be put aside: The world is still here (as far as I can determine) and humanity is still busy going about its evil ways which involve consuming energy at a staggering rate … and that leads me nicely to this week’s revisiting of the topic of my blog posting two weeks ago, “Hello Cheap Energy, Hello Brave New World“.

As I discussed in that posting, an inventor by the name of Andrea Rossi has developed what he claims to be a simple system for generating what would be, essentially, endless and incredibly cheap energy.

On October 28th the biggest test of Rossi’s system, which is called the E-Cat, was conducted in Italy and some results were made public which I’ll discuss in a moment.

Before that I do, let me give you a quick refresh: The E-Cat, which is short for “Energy Catalyzer”, is claimed to produce a “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” or LENR. LENR is another name for “cold fusion” or CF (LENR is considered a more acceptable term than CF which was discredited after two world-class researchers, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, announced that they had a working cold fusion system but which, alas, no one could duplicate).

Allow me to digress for a moment to ask all of you who sent me messages in tones ranging from polite through to downright rude asserting that cold fusion has actually been successfully duplicated: If an experiment that demonstrates cold fusion has really been replicated in the real world by real scientists then why would the scientific community ignore something so profound? Everyone agrees that cold fusion would be a game changer and in itself would be a hugely important scientific discovery so why would anyone in the scientific community ignore an important, successful, and replicable experiment?

Rossi’s E-Cat is claimed to use a secret catalyst to react hydrogen with nickel and, in the process, transmute the nickel into copper producing considerable heat. Whether this reaction works or not and if it does, exactly how it works, has been enormously contentious and the subject of numerous learned and amateur debates.

Rossi has previously conducted several demonstrations of the E-Cat and the publicly revealed results have done little to convince the skeptics but have driven the “Believers” into a frenzy of support, accusations of cover-ups by “The Man”, and endless hyping of other energy generating solutions.

The skeptics fall into two camps: Those who flatly don’t believe that Rossi’s E-Cat could ever work at all, and those who take a rather more objective stance and, whether they are hopeful of a positive outcome or not, are deferring judgment until convincing results are produced.

I would include myself in the latter: I really hope the E-Cat works as claimed but I want to see proof; real, verifiable, scientifically valid proof.

Many of those who argue that the E-Cat is flat out impossible and that the whole thing is a mistake at best or a fraud at worst are serious scientists and, you have to admit, they have a point; how could something like the E-Cat work in defiance of known science?

Even so, to be completely dismissive of Rossi’s claims would seem to be foolish as it is one thing to *believe* something is false based on your assumptions and quite another to be able to *prove* beyond a reasonable doubt that it is false.

While the hard core skeptics might be erring in one direction, the Believers are erring in a completely opposite way. Despite a lack of solid evidence and based on the slim, unverifiable test data from the E-Cat trials revealed to date, they still just believe. They post in blogs, in forums, and on Web sites long and often impassioned arguments based on their interpretations of physics, quantum mechanics, chemistry, string theory, numerology, and maybe even the divination of goat entrails. I find most of these arguments impossible to understand let alone refute because unless you really are a real physicist or chemist (or goat entrails reader) the “proofs” are usually impenetrable jungles of mathematics (or entrails).

A subgroup of the Believers which I shall call the “Suppresists”, appear to be firmly convinced that there is a conspiracy by commercial interests and or the government to prevent any device that upsets the energy economy status quo from being developed and made public. There is, of course, no objective, verifiable foundation to these claims but that doesn’t seem get in the way of the “Suppresists” … disagree with them and you must be either ignorant or in the pay of “The Man.”

The other sub-group I alluded to is the “It Has Already Been Solved” lobby. These people are convinced that company X or inventor Y has cracked the world energy problem and often argue vehemently that whatever Rossi is doing has already been done. They have sent me to Web sites where obscure companies show often fairly polished presentations of how their systems work and, in some cases, videos of supposedly working prototypes. Of course, there’s never anything you can buy or, for that matter, any third party scientifically valid test results but that doesn’t stop the “It Has Already Been Solved” lobby. They just believe.

From the way they argue I’d guess that many of the Believers probably also wear tin-foil hats. Some of the messages I’ve received from people who appear to be in this group are astounding not just for their lack of basic grammar but for their inability to express coherent thought.

So, before we look at the results of the E-Cat test on the 28th, what of Rossi and the E-Cat? Why has he been so cagey and secretive about the E-Cat and not permitted a reputable third party to conduct an objective performance test? Well, there appear to be two plausible explanations.

The first is that Rossi is honestly mistaken and he just believes the E-Cat works and produces excess energy when, in fact, it doesn’t. This is something that has happened before (Pons and Fleischmann appear to have been similarly mistaken) but it’s hard to believe as Rossi has been collaborating with a well-credentialed physicist and emeritus professor from Bologna University, Sergio Focardi. A failure of this kind would be a sad and unfortunate conclusion for all concerned as they would be discredited and reviled.

The other explanation is that the whole thing is a fraud and that the E-Cat doesn’t work at all. This too is hard to swallow because there would be no obvious upside. What benefit could either Rossi or Focardi hope to gain?

Sure, there may be some money involved but I doubt whether it would be a large enough amount to justify what would be an usually elaborate and public hoax and whoever the funds came from would, almost certainly, start legal proceedings (if not retain the services of a “mechanic”).

As with the case of the E-Cat being a mistake, the end result of it being a scam would also result in Rossi and Focardi being discredited and reviled. So unless Rossi has also discovered a way to vanish with the cash, the E-Cat being a fraud seems as unlikely as it being a mistake.

But here’s what I find so odd about Rossi and his project: If the E-Cat works and Rossi is just being cagey to maximize the financial benefits, he’s going about getting rich completely the wrong way. A working CF system (or, if you prefer, LENR system) would be one of most valuable, if not the most valuable, inventions in the history of mankind.

Quite inexplicably, Rossi has apparently choosen to go it alone and, it has been reported, has even sold his home to finance development of the E-Cat! This makes no sense. Rossi could have approached Bill Gates or Paul Allen or Warren Buffett or any of thousands of wealthy individuals and institutions and if the device could be proven to work, he would have been given a blank check! Should that not have been enough all he’d have to do is license the system at, say, $1 per year per kilowatt he’d become the richest person ever within a few years.

So, if Rossi isn’t in it for the money, then what else could he be in it for? If his goal was the betterment of mankind, he’s going about it in a very strange way. If it’s for fame and glory, his current way of promoting the E-Cat makes no sense.

Whatever rationale Rossi has for the way he’s developed, promoted, and presented the E-Cat is a complete mystery so we’ll just have to wait to see how the whole drama plays out.

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Rossi’ esponded to us with an explanation of the generator issue on Sunday, and we added it to our article, POWER FOR THE PEOPLE” at http://www.american-reporter.com. Many thanks for your continuing coverage – it’s deeply appreciated by people like me who are hungry for facts!

interesting ad 1) very american ad 2) dito ad 3) improbable (minior impact) ad 4) improbable; call it delusion, if You will or alternative ‘reality’ (Mills; Blacklight power) compare that e.g. to Ramon Llull, one of the phantastic phantasizers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Lullus) There is some outpouring of intuiton in some people, who are lastly disproven by collective reasoning, but on the other hand there are people like Galileo and Kepler, who finally succeeded, and disproved collective reasoning. ad 5) well, this would be a mythical belief and would transform reality accordingly.

The interesting aspect is, that there possibly is some sort of a hole in our conception of reality. And it is about whether WE consider that possible or not. Count me into the nearly impossible camp. But: I am not 100% sure.

In my everyday life I spend about a fraction of a second per day on the improbable, but in this case it extends to several seconds, which is quite a lot. And I want to have my peace-of-mind again, which I currently do not have. As a probabilistic thinker I want to push this down to the 0.00…x level. Any help is appreciated.

“I want to see the oil economy disrupted and a clean, environmentally sound, endless, and incredibly cheap energy source transform the world in my lifetime.”

It exists now – new nuke technology, possibly the older thorium reactor as well. Few people realize that existing nukes are from a design driven by the needs of the nuclear navy. A nuke for a ship has to be small (meaning high energy density) and has lots of cooling water available. The former is intrinsically dangerous; the latter makes a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) a much greater threat on land. That design was adapted to the light-water nukes we have today, and it was never a particularly good fit.

But there are other nukes and recent improvements (breeder/electrodiffusion) that are amazing. The three biggest problems with existing nukes – proliferation of weapons-grade fuel, safety and waste disposal – are basically solved or vastly reduced.

New nukes are basically atomic equivalents to trash-to-electricity generators. They can burn existing nke waste and the tailings from weapons manufacture (the latter is a relatively unknown but huge environmental problem). They produce much less of a much less radioactive waste (sequestration time is 3% of previous).

Best of all, there is enough nuke waste and weapons tailings right now to run the US at current rates of consumption for something like 750 years.

Other countries are moving and the US is not. The US could lead the world in developing this industry, creating both many high value jobs and technology to sell and export.

The fact that our government is only making small efforts in this area says a great deal about our leadership, our commitment to a decent standard of living for the world’s poor and our interest in a sustainable and clean way of life.

That, Mr. Gibbs, is what you should be writing about, not some doo-dah in Italy who has yet to demonstrate anything but an ability to get the attention of a scientifically illiterate press.

1. It does not work. Because Cu nucleus has more energy (=mass) per nucleon then nickel & hydrogen. This fusion will consume energy, not produce.

2. I think this “black box” is a pseudo-good for money laundering by criminal customers. A million bucks box with a self-cost of a couple of thousand and with an image of expensive secret Hi-Tech. What a great tool to be for mobsters to secretly transfer drug-money abroad.

A lot has been said on the physics side, but very few of us can contribute meaningfully to that aspect of the issue.

The scam theory suffers from a lack of exit, and a lack of benefits. Maddoff had both. His benefits were obvious and his exit strategy was death. Most of us would probably be happy to live off an endless supply of money until our demise. In Rossi’s case, he could sell a few machines to gullible customers, but what’s next if they don’t work? And, if the claimed sales are bogus, why the commitment to sponsor research and how will he pay for it?

Now, let’s assume for a minute that I have such a solution, one that I don’t fully understand, in my basement lab. How would I behave? I wouldn’t be able to bet on patent protection, as I miss the full explanation of the process. And even if I benefited from the protection of a patent, there’s no guarantee that I haven’t stumbled on some generic mechanism that could be exploited by other methods, not falling under my patents. Very strict contractual relations could, to a large extent, offer protection. I would certainly consider them. Also, that technology would clearly be disruptive and be a significant threat to the most important segment of our current economy, the energy market. Now, in many areas of the world, walking “suspiciously” near a pipeline will get you shot. How many wars, how many civilian casulaties have we seen, whose sole purpose was to protect energy interests? Without falling into paranoia, it’s not unreasonable to try to be a bit careful, for example by going public in a limited way. This diminishes the risk of having an unfortunate accident. Lastly, would I care about the scientific establishment? Not for a fraction of a second.

Ok so which news source am I to believe. Wired magazine wrote this: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion_pr.html Further, the 28th demo had exactly one big name reporter in attendance, the AP newswire. However, AP has reported absolutely NOTHING! What is going on? I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I think you were told to tone it down to protect Forbes’s reputation.